A. Field
The invention relates to a siding element for creating a structural facade of buildings.
B. Related Art
A siding element of this type is described in as yet unpublished European Patent Application 04 030 577.3-2303.
Siding elements of this generic type, of the kind described for instance in the aforementioned as yet unpublished European patent application, are used in various forms for external coverings of buildings of various types, such as warehouse buildings, factory buildings, airport arrival and departure terminals, and agricultural sheds, as well as private homes, in order to give them a weather-resistant outer skin. Profile-rolled sheet-metal structures were originally used for these purposes and they have been and still are on the market in the form of large-area units. While now, as before, these large-area units are used for such purposes, for the sake of greater variability of use, it is increasingly desired to use smaller-area siding elements, by means of which the same or even improved weather resistance and tightness enable more-individualized design of the external structure of buildings provided with such siding elements.
This can be carried out especially well, for instance, with the siding elements that are described in the aforementioned as yet unpublished European patent application.
One fundamental characteristic of buildings, assuming a block-shaped building, for instance, is that once it has been erected, its four exterior faces (four being named solely as an example here) are each exposed to different environmental conditions, such as sunshine, rain and snow, wind and dust, and materials that are entrained or dissolved in the air, or present therein in corpuscular form. To summarize, in the final analysis all four exterior faces of what is, for instance, a block-shaped building are typically exposed to completely different environmental factors, which in turn has an influence on the building elements located behind the siding element as well as on the interior of the building. If, as has until now always been done, the building is provided on all four exterior faces (to remain with the example given here) with identical siding elements, then no account of the different environmental conditions is taken, as mentioned above as an example, which leads to the disadvantages that the exterior face on the sunny side of the building, for instance, because of sunshine, heats up more than is desirable, and despite the best insulation material on the front of or in the building construction, this heating is perceptible, while conversely the exterior face of the building exposed to the primary wind direction has heat extracted from it, which despite the best possible insulation material on the building elements next to the siding elements is also perceptible in the interior of the building.
As a result, quite different temperatures can occur in various spatial volumes in the buildings, and this effect is even more pronounced if the interior is divided up into individual zones (rooms), so that once again provisions must be made for removing heat in certain zones (using cooling devices) or supplying heat to certain zones (by means of heaters).